Importing peace for troubled minds

Jacob Tolstrup leads Lundbeck's efforts to bring latest mental health drugs to the China market

Jacob Tolstrup, 46, executive vice-president of H. Lundbeck A/S, the Copenhagen-headquartered pharmaceutical company, has a lofty goal: to bring happiness to people in China who are suffering from depression and other disorders related to the central nervous system.

He must know a thing or two about happiness as Denmark is regarded as one of the happiest nations in the world.

Lundbeck specializes in treatments, solutions and drugs for disorders of the central nervous system. These include depression, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease.

The history of Lundbeck in China goes back to 2007, when it first registered as a legal entity in Beijing. The company today is actively involved in China's ongoing healthcare reforms, consumption upgrade and the Healthy China 2030 initiative to meet essential needs.

Tolstrup joined Lundbeck in 1999. He said depression is one of the biggest economic burdens on the Chinese society. If unchecked, it may extract high costs in the form of terrible social consequences for the patients and their families.

As a common mental illness, depression is a multidimensional disorder with emotional, physical and cognitive symptoms, he said. Only through comprehensive treatment of these symptoms can patients achieve full functional recovery.

Tolstrup said the working population has gradually become the hardest hit by depression in China.

"Because of fast growth of China's economy and fierce competition between people, the pressure of work and life has been increasing dramatically," he said. "Depression has become a significant problem for the country's working population, with loss of productivity, and people unable to perform their jobs and make contributions to the society."

According to the World Health Organization, more than 54 million people in China are troubled by depression in 2017, accounting for a staggering 4.2 percent of the population.

As depression seriously impairs productivity due to sick leave or poor work efficiency, Wang Gang, president of Beijing Anding Hospital of Capital Medical University, said depression will cause not only harm to the mental wellbeing of the patients but economic losses.

"Most patients suffering from depression are aged between 20 and 60. This means, the majority of the patients are workers," Wang said. "We have seen more and more drug intervention for the treatment of depression, such as Vortioxetine in recent years."

Established in Denmark in 1915, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange-listed Lundbeck currently has employees in 55 countries and regions, and its products are registered in more than 100 countries. It operates plants in Denmark, France and Italy, as well as research facilities in Denmark with more than 1,000 researchers.

With its drugs being approved and launched in China, Tolstrup said Chinese patients will have easier access to imported drugs and benefit from the latest research and development outcomes from the world.

Lundbeck introduced Brintellix, its latest drug for major depressive disorder, usually known as depression, in China late last year, and officially started selling it throughout the country in April. This is a notable step for the company in its journey to cure the mental disease worldwide.

"We are inspired by the progress China has been making to give more easy access for the patients to imported drugs," said Tolstrup. "We have seen positive changes at the supervision and reform levels, which will facilitate us to bring more innovation into China."

"In the past decade, China has come a long way, and what we see is a huge difference from what the country was a decade or 15 years ago," Tolstrup said. "Although China has made significant progress in mental health care and services in the past several decades, the diagnosis rate and the treatment rate of depression are still at a very low level, as compared to other chronic diseases."

In the past, people in China did not have much knowledge about depression. Today, although the disease awareness has been improved gradually, there is still much space for further improvement.

One in four patients is treated with an antidepressant invented by Lundbeck in the China market today. Lundbeck has included China as one of its top strategic markets in its vision to ensure Chinese patients can get same treatment as those in Denmark, according to Tolstrup.

Educated in both Denmark and Germany, Tolstrup is an industry veteran, with 19 years' experience in pharmaceutical sales and marketing. Before taking the current position, he has worked in North America and Europe. He likes running and playing football during the weekend.